Well, this is awkward
by Mad Vardia
Summary: **This is an alternate universe story. After the war Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy both become professors/researchers working at Hogwarts.** Tinder has reached the magical world and Hermione decides to give it a try. Just as she's about to give up, she ends up finding a familiar face... *Please leave a review if you want me to add more chapters! I'd love to hear your thoughts!*
1. Chapter 1

Swipe. Swipe. Swipe.

Hermione never had installed the Tinder app on her muggle smartphone. After all, she wasn't looking for just some random date. She'd rather find a nice smart wizard guy, hopefully smart enough to talk about the science of magic with, the topic that occupied her mind most of the time anyways.

All the good, bad and ugly muggle things ultimately got reinvented for the magical folk, and so here she was: swiping her finger (mostly left) on a piece of enchanted parchment, looking at the endless stream of moving photographs. Some continuously flexed their muscles, showing off their bare chest (that's an instant swipe left, thank you very much), some would just wink at her or try to turn to the most flattering angle, and others would just smile in a charming way. Her own profile wasn't too sophisticated either, just the first name and a photo with a rather reserved kind of smile. Basic info - she was a magical scholar, and a professor at Hogwarts, looking for a similarly minded guy.

"Whatcha doing?"

Hermione almost jumped off her chair at the sudden sound of high pitched voice coming from behind her chair. She hurried to fold the parchment to try to hide it away, but it was too late. Ginny had already seen the dating app, before Hermione had a chance to notice her presence.

"Oh Gin. Come on. You'll give me a heart attack."

"Oooh, I see someone's rather jumpy. Caught anything good today?" Ginny winked, clearly enjoying the situation. Hermione was not easily embarrassed - after all, she really did know almost everything about any subject. Dating however was not one of them.

"I dunno. The more I look at them the less I want to continue swiping…" She sighed. She really felt resigned. Wasn't one supposed to just meet the love of their life randomly, at a party or something like that? This felt extremely artificial.

"Come on, don't be like that, give life a chance!" Ginny brought in an empty chair and sat next to Hermione. "Let's do this together."

She took the parchment out of Hermione's hands and unrolled it. It was currently displaying a photo of a thin, black-haired guy wearing a cowboy hat. He winked at them, and proceeded to send them a virtual kiss.

"Sheesh, this one is really trying too hard," Ginny said. "Bye, bye!" She addressed him, and immediately swiped left, not even giving him a chance to react.

What happened next left both of the girls frozen with their mouths open for good ten seconds.

Staring at them, with his trademark overconfident smile plastered to his face, was none other than Draco Malfoy. That is, just a moving photo of him of course. Evidently, the photo Draco had no idea who the two girls with their jaws dropped to the floor on the other side of the parchment were - otherwise he wouldn't keep smile at them so charmingly.

Ginny was the first one to break the silence.

"I'm sorry, Hermione. I have to do this," she said.

"Wait, what…?"

Before Hermione had the chance to understand what was going on, Ginny snatched the parchment and started walking away towards the other side of the room.

"I'm swiping this one right!" she yelled.

"No!" Hermione grabbed her by her robe and try to pull her down to get the parchment out of Ginny's hands. She made a good effort, but in the end it proved futile. Ginny had already swiped the photo of Malfoy to the right.

There was no turning back. The invitation had been sent. In a few minutes, he would open his parchment and get a notification. It would say that none other than a certain Hermione Granger would like to connect with him.

And to think that just an hour ago Hermione had thought this evening couldn't possibly get any worse.


	2. Chapter 2

Hermione was lying in her bed, staring at the ceiling. A large portion of her mind was solely focused on devising different ways of killing Ginny. The rest of it was frantically imagining all kinds of possible worst-case scenarios that might come true when Malfoy opens his parchment.

Not that she should care. Obviously, she shouldn't. She didn't even speak to Malfoy these days much, other than when arguing with him during all-staff meetings. They both simply avoided each other as much as it was possible for two professors working at Hogwarts.

She sighted. She should have never gotten that stupid dating parchment. No good could ever come out of the whole situation

* * *

To say that Draco was pleased with his day would be a massive understatement. He just found a reason for taking his teasing towards Granger to a whole new level.

She swiped him right.

Now, he wasn't an idiot, obviously either someone did this as a prank to her, or her whole account was fake (unlikely - the info was so boringly and obviously written by Granger in her stiff reserved manner). Nevertheless, he had a hard proof that something was up, and she probably knew about it by now, too.

But what to do with all this? He would still had to decide.

* * *

"Seen." That's all it said. Malfoy had seen the intention to connect. Damn.

Well at least maybe he chose to ignore it. Why else wouldn't he write anything back?

Hermione was walking back from a tutoring session to her chamber. Her plan was simply to avoid him at all cost. Shouldn't be too difficult - no meetings this week, and the rooms where they both worked and lived were located at the opposite sides of the whole castle...

"Granger."

Fuck. It was Malfoy's voice coming from behind her. There was no one else in the entire hallway. What was he even doing here?

She stopped and turned around slowly. The annoying git was leaning against the wall, smirking, obviously very pleased with himself. He knew, she knew, there was no escaping it.

"Look Malfoy, I'm sure you're not dumb enough to think I actually fancy you. I swiped you by mistake," she said firmly. It only made his smirk grow wider.

"Oh there's no need to be shy Granger. I don't blame you for wanting me. I can totally understand," he pushed himself back up from his leaning position and started taking slow, calculated steps in her direction, looking straight into her eyes.

Hermione rolled her eyes at him. She wanted to keep her cool, but his confident manner was starting to make her feel uneasy.

He stopped at about an arm's distance from her.

"Well then. Let's go out for dinner tonight. Harrison's on Richmond Street at 8pm. Don't be late." Malfoy said, still keeping that trademark smirk plastered to his face.

Hermione's jaw dropped. She was not expecting that. What on Earth was going on?

"Sure, good luck waiting for me there," she replied. Obviously she wasn't considering showing up.

He took one step closer.

"Is that so? You're chickening out, Granger? Wouldn't expect you not to, to be honest. I'll be there having my dinner anyways," having said that he took another step closer only to turn to the side and walk passed her, in the direction of the East Stairs of the castle. He passed by her so closely, she could feel the gust of air he created, and smell his cologne. Admittedly, it smelled good.

Damn him. Damn, damn, damn. He knew exactly which strings to pull on her. It was a dare to show up at the restaurant, and Hermione never backed off from a dare. Especially if Malfoy was the one who made it.


End file.
